Vlad's big bombs, Kershaw's near-perfecto, two coaches making nice, MLB kicking the Bauer can down the road, Saul Goodman, Bulleit bourbon, and a lovely guest post
I wish I had a lawn to sit on. The air is fresh, the sky is blue, we don't need masks as long as we aren't right on top of each other, and there are so many things we can be grumpy about.
I've found the happy medium - a townhouse 10 or so miles from downtown. Woodlands back the property line, so now that the yard crews are done with this section I'm mostly hearing a Carolina Wren who very much wants to meet somebody special today. Earlier this week I got to watch a chipmunk spend an hour on the porch eating the lizard he apparently caught. I didn't realize chipmunks were meat eaters but they are rodents so I guess it makes sense. We also have a rabbit that made a home under the shed and started a family. Our Jack Russell / Dachshund mix is completely oblivious to the presence of the rabbits. Something ain't right with that dog.
Right? IIRC both Jack Russells and Dachshunds were bred to be hunters of small burrowing critters. Guess yours has genes from the shallow end of the pool
The windows are open now but it will be 80 later and then stormy, so I am enjoying it. But I am also in the city - Queens, so no hustle and bustle but still the city - and as much as I love it here, I would love to have woodland once in a while. (Makes a note to visit the aptly named Forest Park in May.)
I agree with everything you said here…..although I’m really curious about what baseball will be like in 20 years that will force people to bitch & moan that they miss the three-true-outcomes game of today. Or saying something mind-boggling like “Sure Manfred was bad, but he’s not nearly as bad as ______ is today!”
I would also suggest that the current emphasis on velocity is making pitchers throw harder and harder, pushing up against the limits of what the human body can do. The "junkballer" who could (comparatively speaking) soft toss for seven or eight innings every fourth day and rely on craft and guile to get the outs is essentially extinct.
I don't love how pitching has evolved because to a large degree it makes the game duller for the fans. And I think you can argue that the reliance on interchangeable relievers who don't stay in the game for long at all is not only dull but questionable, since most of these guys are relievers because they weren't good enough to be starters. But the way starters are treated now is a smart evolution of the game. More than ever we know that a starting pitcher's job is basically to hurt his arm every five days and then spend most of the next four days healing. Five and six man rotations and pitch counts are ways to minimize that damage, extend careers, make pitchers more likely to be available in the post-season. There are countless pitchers who would have probably lasted longer if we were more enlightened in the old days. It's true that we lose something by losing complete games, but it might be worth the tradeoff.
My main objection to the opener is that it's part of a plan to devalue starting pitchers so teams can cut payroll. The opener can be a sound strategy, but the teams that use it most are the ones least likely to pay for starters in the long run.
That guy coming in to start the second inning wouldn’t even need to go 5 innings to get the win. So he’s even more likely to pad his stats with wins, in games where he follows an opener.
In addition to what others said about performance, we all know that back then pitchers were also a little more disposable. Both because they were cheaper and on essentially one-year contracts, and because very few people inside the game (and outside it for much of that time) understood arms beyond "If it hurts when you do that, then don't do that. Except on the day you start."
The legendary pitchers who had long careers are all standing atop a mountain of guys who were just as good for four years before having to go to the horse hospital (https://i.imgflip.com/5c2poa.jpg).
But once people began to understand that you actually can do things to keep arms healthy, combined with winning free agency, it made sense to start paying more attention to workload.
I don't know about that, even now the torn rotator cuff is a tough one to come back from. Elbows seem pretty fixable these days, but shoulders not so much.
Despite homers being the best thing a batter can do, I don't rule out the possibility that they could also kill a rally. All of a sudden the pitcher has a clean slate, and isn't pitching in the stretch anymore. The next batter isn't coming up with men on, which could conceivably change his approach.
I'm not absolutely convinced it's true either, but I don't rule it out.
On the other hand, a homer eliminates the chance of a double play, which we've always been told is also a rally killer. So how can something that eliminates a rally killer be a rally killer itself?
I think it can work that way in some situations. If a pitcher was struggling, knowing the bases were empty finally could give him a little mental reset and let him focus more on the batter he has to deal with next, the crowd might be quieter once any buzz from the home run dies down, etc. So I can see how it could work that way in some situations but not universally.
So basically as with everything in biology the answer is "it depends."
It's a very cool thought experiment, and one of the things I dig about the game. We'd need to establish what a "rally" is first. I'd say a rally has to be more than a single run, and probably more than two. Is three enough?
And then it depends where the homerun comes during the rally. Two singles and homerun gives us a 3-run rally, so the homerun got us to that 3-run minimum. But if the team doesn't score again after that, maybe it both solidified the rally, and also put a period on it.
But if the order of proceedings is, single, HR, double, double, end of inning, then we got our 3-run rally and the HR didn't kill it.
Rather than calling a home run a "rally killer" I consider it a rally completion. You build up with hits and cap it off with the homer. And the cycle repeats until there are 3 outs.
Playing Vlad Guerrero gives the Blue Jays an unfair advantage. The Yankees should not be punished for their personal choice to never draft and sign him, so they should be allowed to add 3 more All-Stars when they play Toronto to make it more fair.
You missed some news in the Brewers-O's game: John Means left early with forearm tightness. I hope he is fine, both for his sake and for that of O's fans who desperately need a reason to watch their team play. Means is pretty much it some nights.
The Mets-Phils game clocked in at over four hours, and the writeup on Amazin' Avenue called it a slog. It was getaway day for them, too, but didn't seem to matter. Maybe when your getaway from from Philly to NYC and you have Thursday off, you want to enjoy the sites.
Tried to listen to the Mets game while working. Nope, this just ate my concentration. But then did listen to the Dodgers till Kershaw was lifted, since history matters. Though him being pulled coincided perfectly with me needing to log off anyway for a meeting. (I agree entirely with pulling him. It's more important to make sure he can pitch like that as often as possible than to pursue even a perfect game. I think, BTW, the single pitcher no-hitter is going to be even rarer going forward.)
Craig made mention yesterday that Cedric Mullins was the only good player on the team, but he forgot Means. He's the Orioles "ace" even though he'd likely slot in as a solid 3 or 4 on most teams.
Means has often been good, when healthy. He was among the very best pitchers in baseball for the first half of last season. But he's anything but durable.
This is one of the reasons that I kept beating the drum for the Orioles to sign some damned pitching in the offseason. Teams always have pitching injuries to deal with, and it's not like there are MLB-ready options just laying about the Oriole clubhouse. Even before Means got hurt we were relying on AAAA types like Watkins, and several youngsters who had terrible showings last year in their brief tryouts.
Many of my fellow Oriole fans (of the DOZENS of us remaining) argued against me, saying that signing some actual major league arms would both set back the already-too-long rebuild (not sure the logic there) and that they wanted to "let the kids pitch". My argument all along was that even with the acquisition of 3-4 mid-level pitchers there would STILL be plenty of innings left over to pitch the youngsters to see what they have. Injuries and general ineffectiveness will provide a lot of opportunities, and so far two pitchers have gone down in a week.
I shudder to think what dregs they're going to scrape up to fill the needed innings, and we haven't even been playing for a week. SMH.
You can like John Sterling, hate him, or love him. I love him, but for a professional baseball team to have this guy as the sole play-by-play guy on the radio is not okay. He's gotta go. I'm starting a GoFundMe to get rid of O'Neill AND Sterling. Please contribute.
It always seems nuts that a team with such an obsession over being the best has for so long had such mediocrity across its broadcasts. I would even say that of all the NYC teams, the Yanks are the only ones without a world class play by play man. As if when your team is always good, fans will listen to anyone, and only when your team is bad do you need quality in the booth.
One thing about MLBTV is you get to see/hear some pretty awful announcers from the local tv broadcasts from all over the country. There are like 4 or 5 that are actually good. I don't know why but the worst seem to be Detroit, Milwaukee, The Chicago's, The Ohio's, basically that whole stretch around the great lakes.
Kudos then to the Dodgers for finding someone to follow a legend who is by all accounts good at what he does and possibly a major voice for years to come.
Weird that some teams (looking at you, Detroit) seem to think they have completely different demographics listening on the radio and watching TV, because Dan Dickerson is fabulous.
While not young, I think the Astros radio booth has a much more modern presentation than most radio broadcasts that I appreciate. I think it helps that the booth is Robert Ford, who is unique in the industry for both grinding his way to a big league job from the bottom and because he's Black, and Steve Sparks, who was a journeyman knuckleballer and not some iconic former player.
The broadcasts are professional, but the booth has fully embraced the modern game (and is excited to share and explain analytics etc.) and has a laid back banter that feels more like a podcast or radio show.
On the flip side, I get to hear some really great announcers, too. Loved that I could get in some Scully now and then during his final season. i will always treasure that since it used to be the only way to hear him was to go to LA.
Right on! I, too, very much enjoyed listening to Scully his final few seasons. I like the Seattle crew. Also Todd Kalas does a nice job in Houston. I like Dwayne and BA here in Tampa but can't watch due to circumstance.
Great to hear what's going on around the country given my nightly muting of Kay/O'Neill on YES and frustrations with Sterling on radio. Kinda Making me feel "better."
Man, if you're talking TV guys, I don't agree about Milwaukee (Brian Anderson is very good) and especially the White Sox (Jason Benetti and Steve Stone are so good I often tune in White Sox games even though I'm not particularly a fan).
I agree the commentators have been mostly awful, but I like McLaughlin and Rooney pretty well for PBP. Not top tier, but perfectly fine. You're certainly right about the color guys though. At least Hrabosky's out of the booth.
There are only 3 TV announcing crews I'll tune in just because they're enjoyable to listen to, even though I'm not a fan of their teams: The White Sox, the Mets, and the Giants.
I choose to embrace the weird with Sterling. Rather than get mad at the mistakes I take them as a part of the whole. Is it an A+ broadcast? No. Will I miss the hell out out of John and Suzyn when they're gone? Hell yea.
Also the YES cameras and broadcast crew were evil on that Stanton shot. Everybody involved with the Yankees - directly, tangentially, or other - desperately wanted that fairy tale to play out. The cameras totally had me fooled. Sterling's call was beyond dumb but he wasn't alone on that one.
Max Fried took a liner off the back of his right leg near his knee. He was removed from the game after facing one more batter. Atlanta has a lot of touted pitching prospects and former prospects but a pretty shallow rotation of even quasi proven starters. Here’s hoping Fried is okay.
The rotation is the same as it ever was. I still like the top three a lot and also Kyle Wright. Strider will get a start soon I suspect and Bryce the Elder had a nice debut the other night
Morton is good, but old. Anderson missed time last year and counting on even 170 IP may be a stretch. Like I said above, I’m hoping Fried is okay.
Wright, Strider, Elder ... we’ve been down the road of promising pitchers before. Newcomb, Allard, Sims, Toussaint, Folty, etc. The old Their Ain’t NoSuch Thing As A Pitching Prospect is burned into my brain. I’ll count on Strider, etc after one full uninjured season in the bigs.
With the money spent on Jansen and McHugh, I figure that AA has decided that an iffy rotation plus deep bullpen is a better bet for success in today’s game. But I miss Maddux, Glavine, Niekro ... heck even Mickey Mahler and Zane Smith when starters were key to success and failure.
For anyone grousing about taking Kershaw out, I guarantee that they have never been a pitcher, and/or had one in family. Starters are on pitch counts for the purpose of making sure they have them off the IL. Kershaw knows the pain and inability to recover for multiple games after “going for it.”
Yep. Age (young or old), injury history, and if they have worked up to a gradual increase in pitches per outing. Pitchers know when they are done in a game. Aces get injured when they feel they can’t admit it or team needs them to continue.
Well, instead of sitting on his ass for three months, he could have been out throwing and getting ready for the season. Seems like, for the amount of money he's making, he couldn't have acted like a professional.
Kershaw can't throw more than 80 pitchers because Kershaw doesn't want to throw more than 80 pitchers per game. It certainly is his choice, but it doesn't make him some kind of hero either. Not being prepared for the season he is making millions of dollars to play in is pretty unprofessional.
Zack Greinke signed a week before the season, made on pre-season start and got the nod on Opening Day.
Kershaw didn’t pick up a ball for 3 months because his elbow was shot, which is what caused him to miss the end of last season, and perhaps cost the Dodgers the chance to go to the WS. Started tossing in January. But don't let the facts stand in the way of a good player-bashing.
Couple of pedantic follow ups from your 4th or 5th favorite San Diego-based A’s fan: The Pads aren’t heading to the east coast as written above. Their home opener vs. Atlanta is today. The A’s HASTILY announced yesterday afternoon that they’d have a 2022 date for Stewart’s jersey retirement (and ceremony dates honoring the 2002 20-game win streak and 1972 championship teams) sometime next week. My favorite team remains an embarrassing fucking shit show tho
The Kershaw removal is a bummer but I wasequally disappointed Vlad was in the on-deck circle when Bichette made the last out for the Jays in the ninth.
Meanwhile, the Braves are still experiencing a post WS hangover. But I got another piece of WS merch, the gold series hat, yesterday and I am still not complaining
So the solution to 4-hour games has been right here all along? All we have to do is make them fly back and forth across the county after every series? Seems harsh, but with an average salary of $4 million I guess they'll survive.
Full disclosure: my fan lizard brain immediately went "Craig is deliberately shortchanging the news of a Nats win over the Braves!" but then my evolved brain realized (a) most of the recaps were that short as well and (b) the game wasn't all that exciting anyway. As a fellow Nats fan tweeted yesterday, it was a competent, uneventful and pleasant game to listen to on the radio. That's a win even if the Nats didn't. [But they DID!]
Lou's letter exemplifies the mismanagement in the business of baseball. Instead of maximizing opportunities for fathers to bring their sons to games -- really, all they had to do was not screw it up, because the game has called for years -- in the quest to "maximize revenue streams" and all of that other quaint business jargon MLB owner have made it difficult for fathers to take sons to the ballpark and have the experience that today's fathers had with their fathers, and that their fathers had with their fathers. THAT is the reason that today's kids don't have the relationship with the sport that past generations did. It's not phones, or that the sport is too slow, or expansion making talent thin. It's the price of a ticket, and the price of parking, and the price of a hot dog, and the inability to watch your team on TV without paying and not miss an episode of the summer-long soap opera (if you can't make it to the park). We don't need ghost runners or pitch clocks or banning the shift or three-batter minimums. We need families to be able financially to go to multiple games a season. We need parents to be able to go to a concession window and not pay $5 for a bottle of water when you can go to the local supermarket and buy 24 of them for $4.99.
I am blessed to make a good living. I took my boys to games from when they were pishers. They are now 21, 19, and 16, and all are rabid baseball fans, far more than any other sport.
All this is true. But doesn't this go for a lot of other things? I can get a ticket for this Sunday's Mets game for less than it would cost me to go to a movie in Queens, and at least the Mets let me bring in my own food. It's just expensive to entertain kids outside the home.
Or that is my understanding. Lacking kids, I am only guessing on my own experience feeling like two movie tickets for anything is too much now.
Yeah, everything is expensive. Try taking your kid to a broadway show (with dinner & parking nearby), and you immediately stop complaining about the price of baseball. Plus, the price of games has nothing to do with baseball losing fans to basketball, football, hockey, etc. which are equally as expensive and more exclusive due to there being fewer games and/or seats.
This girl might be his kindred spirit:
https://twitter.com/ajtonge40/status/1514050509606428675
I wish I had a lawn to sit on. The air is fresh, the sky is blue, we don't need masks as long as we aren't right on top of each other, and there are so many things we can be grumpy about.
I've found the happy medium - a townhouse 10 or so miles from downtown. Woodlands back the property line, so now that the yard crews are done with this section I'm mostly hearing a Carolina Wren who very much wants to meet somebody special today. Earlier this week I got to watch a chipmunk spend an hour on the porch eating the lizard he apparently caught. I didn't realize chipmunks were meat eaters but they are rodents so I guess it makes sense. We also have a rabbit that made a home under the shed and started a family. Our Jack Russell / Dachshund mix is completely oblivious to the presence of the rabbits. Something ain't right with that dog.
Right? IIRC both Jack Russells and Dachshunds were bred to be hunters of small burrowing critters. Guess yours has genes from the shallow end of the pool
The windows are open now but it will be 80 later and then stormy, so I am enjoying it. But I am also in the city - Queens, so no hustle and bustle but still the city - and as much as I love it here, I would love to have woodland once in a while. (Makes a note to visit the aptly named Forest Park in May.)
I agree with everything you said here…..although I’m really curious about what baseball will be like in 20 years that will force people to bitch & moan that they miss the three-true-outcomes game of today. Or saying something mind-boggling like “Sure Manfred was bad, but he’s not nearly as bad as ______ is today!”
I would also suggest that the current emphasis on velocity is making pitchers throw harder and harder, pushing up against the limits of what the human body can do. The "junkballer" who could (comparatively speaking) soft toss for seven or eight innings every fourth day and rely on craft and guile to get the outs is essentially extinct.
Ryan Yarbrough for the Rays is one of the very few left in the league pitching this way.
I don't love how pitching has evolved because to a large degree it makes the game duller for the fans. And I think you can argue that the reliance on interchangeable relievers who don't stay in the game for long at all is not only dull but questionable, since most of these guys are relievers because they weren't good enough to be starters. But the way starters are treated now is a smart evolution of the game. More than ever we know that a starting pitcher's job is basically to hurt his arm every five days and then spend most of the next four days healing. Five and six man rotations and pitch counts are ways to minimize that damage, extend careers, make pitchers more likely to be available in the post-season. There are countless pitchers who would have probably lasted longer if we were more enlightened in the old days. It's true that we lose something by losing complete games, but it might be worth the tradeoff.
None of which means I will ever like the opener.
My main objection to the opener is that it's part of a plan to devalue starting pitchers so teams can cut payroll. The opener can be a sound strategy, but the teams that use it most are the ones least likely to pay for starters in the long run.
That guy coming in to start the second inning wouldn’t even need to go 5 innings to get the win. So he’s even more likely to pad his stats with wins, in games where he follows an opener.
In addition to what others said about performance, we all know that back then pitchers were also a little more disposable. Both because they were cheaper and on essentially one-year contracts, and because very few people inside the game (and outside it for much of that time) understood arms beyond "If it hurts when you do that, then don't do that. Except on the day you start."
The legendary pitchers who had long careers are all standing atop a mountain of guys who were just as good for four years before having to go to the horse hospital (https://i.imgflip.com/5c2poa.jpg).
But once people began to understand that you actually can do things to keep arms healthy, combined with winning free agency, it made sense to start paying more attention to workload.
Imagine the career Mark Fidrych could have had if he wasn't overworked. ☹️
It was more a mis- or undiagnosed torn rotator cuff that did him in. If the injury were spotted and treated in time, he could have easily recovered.
I don't know about that, even now the torn rotator cuff is a tough one to come back from. Elbows seem pretty fixable these days, but shoulders not so much.
Pitcher fragility is one of the most depressing things about sport. So many talents that are just broken so early.
I’m trying to find a way to work “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille” into the Stewart news but can’t quite get there yet.
Found some people who haven't read Craig's book yet - https://twitter.com/JomboyMedia/status/1514434473894555654
For a place known for burnt meat scraps covered in .99 cheez whiz, I don’t expect anything less.
Despite homers being the best thing a batter can do, I don't rule out the possibility that they could also kill a rally. All of a sudden the pitcher has a clean slate, and isn't pitching in the stretch anymore. The next batter isn't coming up with men on, which could conceivably change his approach.
I'm not absolutely convinced it's true either, but I don't rule it out.
On the other hand, a homer eliminates the chance of a double play, which we've always been told is also a rally killer. So how can something that eliminates a rally killer be a rally killer itself?
https://youtu.be/Sk0n5uozwcI
I think it can work that way in some situations. If a pitcher was struggling, knowing the bases were empty finally could give him a little mental reset and let him focus more on the batter he has to deal with next, the crowd might be quieter once any buzz from the home run dies down, etc. So I can see how it could work that way in some situations but not universally.
So basically as with everything in biology the answer is "it depends."
It's a very cool thought experiment, and one of the things I dig about the game. We'd need to establish what a "rally" is first. I'd say a rally has to be more than a single run, and probably more than two. Is three enough?
And then it depends where the homerun comes during the rally. Two singles and homerun gives us a 3-run rally, so the homerun got us to that 3-run minimum. But if the team doesn't score again after that, maybe it both solidified the rally, and also put a period on it.
But if the order of proceedings is, single, HR, double, double, end of inning, then we got our 3-run rally and the HR didn't kill it.
Rather than calling a home run a "rally killer" I consider it a rally completion. You build up with hits and cap it off with the homer. And the cycle repeats until there are 3 outs.
Thank you Craig for publishing my Opening Day letter! Here's to all our parents who gave us love! Lou
Lovely tribute Lou!
Yes, wonderful read.
Thanks, Lou! That was an outstanding piece.
Playing Vlad Guerrero gives the Blue Jays an unfair advantage. The Yankees should not be punished for their personal choice to never draft and sign him, so they should be allowed to add 3 more All-Stars when they play Toronto to make it more fair.
International free agent, no draft
You missed some news in the Brewers-O's game: John Means left early with forearm tightness. I hope he is fine, both for his sake and for that of O's fans who desperately need a reason to watch their team play. Means is pretty much it some nights.
The Mets-Phils game clocked in at over four hours, and the writeup on Amazin' Avenue called it a slog. It was getaway day for them, too, but didn't seem to matter. Maybe when your getaway from from Philly to NYC and you have Thursday off, you want to enjoy the sites.
Tried to listen to the Mets game while working. Nope, this just ate my concentration. But then did listen to the Dodgers till Kershaw was lifted, since history matters. Though him being pulled coincided perfectly with me needing to log off anyway for a meeting. (I agree entirely with pulling him. It's more important to make sure he can pitch like that as often as possible than to pursue even a perfect game. I think, BTW, the single pitcher no-hitter is going to be even rarer going forward.)
GKR ! Best in the business
Craig made mention yesterday that Cedric Mullins was the only good player on the team, but he forgot Means. He's the Orioles "ace" even though he'd likely slot in as a solid 3 or 4 on most teams.
Means has often been good, when healthy. He was among the very best pitchers in baseball for the first half of last season. But he's anything but durable.
This is one of the reasons that I kept beating the drum for the Orioles to sign some damned pitching in the offseason. Teams always have pitching injuries to deal with, and it's not like there are MLB-ready options just laying about the Oriole clubhouse. Even before Means got hurt we were relying on AAAA types like Watkins, and several youngsters who had terrible showings last year in their brief tryouts.
Many of my fellow Oriole fans (of the DOZENS of us remaining) argued against me, saying that signing some actual major league arms would both set back the already-too-long rebuild (not sure the logic there) and that they wanted to "let the kids pitch". My argument all along was that even with the acquisition of 3-4 mid-level pitchers there would STILL be plenty of innings left over to pitch the youngsters to see what they have. Injuries and general ineffectiveness will provide a lot of opportunities, and so far two pitchers have gone down in a week.
I shudder to think what dregs they're going to scrape up to fill the needed innings, and we haven't even been playing for a week. SMH.
You can like John Sterling, hate him, or love him. I love him, but for a professional baseball team to have this guy as the sole play-by-play guy on the radio is not okay. He's gotta go. I'm starting a GoFundMe to get rid of O'Neill AND Sterling. Please contribute.
People are asking how much we need to get this done -- I'd say about $5G and ALL the money will go to the cause.
It always seems nuts that a team with such an obsession over being the best has for so long had such mediocrity across its broadcasts. I would even say that of all the NYC teams, the Yanks are the only ones without a world class play by play man. As if when your team is always good, fans will listen to anyone, and only when your team is bad do you need quality in the booth.
One thing about MLBTV is you get to see/hear some pretty awful announcers from the local tv broadcasts from all over the country. There are like 4 or 5 that are actually good. I don't know why but the worst seem to be Detroit, Milwaukee, The Chicago's, The Ohio's, basically that whole stretch around the great lakes.
Kudos then to the Dodgers for finding someone to follow a legend who is by all accounts good at what he does and possibly a major voice for years to come.
Which, of course means, that the Steinbrenner clan perceives it's core demographic as male 70-year-old anti-bunters.
Weird that some teams (looking at you, Detroit) seem to think they have completely different demographics listening on the radio and watching TV, because Dan Dickerson is fabulous.
I keep wishing the Tigers would pair up Dan and Gibby.
While not young, I think the Astros radio booth has a much more modern presentation than most radio broadcasts that I appreciate. I think it helps that the booth is Robert Ford, who is unique in the industry for both grinding his way to a big league job from the bottom and because he's Black, and Steve Sparks, who was a journeyman knuckleballer and not some iconic former player.
The broadcasts are professional, but the booth has fully embraced the modern game (and is excited to share and explain analytics etc.) and has a laid back banter that feels more like a podcast or radio show.
On the flip side, I get to hear some really great announcers, too. Loved that I could get in some Scully now and then during his final season. i will always treasure that since it used to be the only way to hear him was to go to LA.
Right on! I, too, very much enjoyed listening to Scully his final few seasons. I like the Seattle crew. Also Todd Kalas does a nice job in Houston. I like Dwayne and BA here in Tampa but can't watch due to circumstance.
Great to hear what's going on around the country given my nightly muting of Kay/O'Neill on YES and frustrations with Sterling on radio. Kinda Making me feel "better."
Have you tried the Rays' radio broadcasts? Andy and Dave are fantastic.
Man, if you're talking TV guys, I don't agree about Milwaukee (Brian Anderson is very good) and especially the White Sox (Jason Benetti and Steve Stone are so good I often tune in White Sox games even though I'm not particularly a fan).
I agree the commentators have been mostly awful, but I like McLaughlin and Rooney pretty well for PBP. Not top tier, but perfectly fine. You're certainly right about the color guys though. At least Hrabosky's out of the booth.
There are only 3 TV announcing crews I'll tune in just because they're enjoyable to listen to, even though I'm not a fan of their teams: The White Sox, the Mets, and the Giants.
I choose to embrace the weird with Sterling. Rather than get mad at the mistakes I take them as a part of the whole. Is it an A+ broadcast? No. Will I miss the hell out out of John and Suzyn when they're gone? Hell yea.
Also the YES cameras and broadcast crew were evil on that Stanton shot. Everybody involved with the Yankees - directly, tangentially, or other - desperately wanted that fairy tale to play out. The cameras totally had me fooled. Sterling's call was beyond dumb but he wasn't alone on that one.
I agree with this too (even tho I said he's gotta go)
Max Fried took a liner off the back of his right leg near his knee. He was removed from the game after facing one more batter. Atlanta has a lot of touted pitching prospects and former prospects but a pretty shallow rotation of even quasi proven starters. Here’s hoping Fried is okay.
The rotation is the same as it ever was. I still like the top three a lot and also Kyle Wright. Strider will get a start soon I suspect and Bryce the Elder had a nice debut the other night
Morton is good, but old. Anderson missed time last year and counting on even 170 IP may be a stretch. Like I said above, I’m hoping Fried is okay.
Wright, Strider, Elder ... we’ve been down the road of promising pitchers before. Newcomb, Allard, Sims, Toussaint, Folty, etc. The old Their Ain’t NoSuch Thing As A Pitching Prospect is burned into my brain. I’ll count on Strider, etc after one full uninjured season in the bigs.
All true. Same as it ever was. It worked out last season, and it helps that that the NLE remains weak, but it is always concerning.
Absolutely!
With the money spent on Jansen and McHugh, I figure that AA has decided that an iffy rotation plus deep bullpen is a better bet for success in today’s game. But I miss Maddux, Glavine, Niekro ... heck even Mickey Mahler and Zane Smith when starters were key to success and failure.
For anyone grousing about taking Kershaw out, I guarantee that they have never been a pitcher, and/or had one in family. Starters are on pitch counts for the purpose of making sure they have them off the IL. Kershaw knows the pain and inability to recover for multiple games after “going for it.”
My kid was pulled after 75 last night, pitch limit set by age.
Only a couple😃
Yep. Age (young or old), injury history, and if they have worked up to a gradual increase in pitches per outing. Pitchers know when they are done in a game. Aces get injured when they feel they can’t admit it or team needs them to continue.
Well, instead of sitting on his ass for three months, he could have been out throwing and getting ready for the season. Seems like, for the amount of money he's making, he couldn't have acted like a professional.
Kershaw can't throw more than 80 pitchers because Kershaw doesn't want to throw more than 80 pitchers per game. It certainly is his choice, but it doesn't make him some kind of hero either. Not being prepared for the season he is making millions of dollars to play in is pretty unprofessional.
Zack Greinke signed a week before the season, made on pre-season start and got the nod on Opening Day.
Kind of hard for a pitcher to work backward from opening day when he doesn't know when opening day is going to be.
Kershaw didn’t pick up a ball for 3 months because his elbow was shot, which is what caused him to miss the end of last season, and perhaps cost the Dodgers the chance to go to the WS. Started tossing in January. But don't let the facts stand in the way of a good player-bashing.
He admitted he didn't throw because of the lockout. There's a fact for you.
Couple of pedantic follow ups from your 4th or 5th favorite San Diego-based A’s fan: The Pads aren’t heading to the east coast as written above. Their home opener vs. Atlanta is today. The A’s HASTILY announced yesterday afternoon that they’d have a 2022 date for Stewart’s jersey retirement (and ceremony dates honoring the 2002 20-game win streak and 1972 championship teams) sometime next week. My favorite team remains an embarrassing fucking shit show tho
"Oh. You didn't get the invite? It's, um, next week. Pretty sure I sent it. I bet it got lost in the mail. Sorry."
I feel seen. [Not proud of it.]
Sounds like the Commanders retiring Sean Taylor's jersey without, um, informing anyone until about three days before.
C'mon now - you know that happens; they were just a little distracted with all those sexual harassment investigations and vengeful e-mail leaks.
Don't forget the scamming the other owners, players, and their own fans out of money.
Besides, everyone knows a Getaway Day Supreme is just a regular getaway day with diced tomatoes and sour cream.
I just noticed that on 22 April the A's finally announced 9/11 as the date for Stewart's number retirement.
So Craig's suggestion of incompetence appears to be the winner.
The Kershaw removal is a bummer but I wasequally disappointed Vlad was in the on-deck circle when Bichette made the last out for the Jays in the ninth.
Meanwhile, the Braves are still experiencing a post WS hangover. But I got another piece of WS merch, the gold series hat, yesterday and I am still not complaining
So the solution to 4-hour games has been right here all along? All we have to do is make them fly back and forth across the county after every series? Seems harsh, but with an average salary of $4 million I guess they'll survive.
Full disclosure: my fan lizard brain immediately went "Craig is deliberately shortchanging the news of a Nats win over the Braves!" but then my evolved brain realized (a) most of the recaps were that short as well and (b) the game wasn't all that exciting anyway. As a fellow Nats fan tweeted yesterday, it was a competent, uneventful and pleasant game to listen to on the radio. That's a win even if the Nats didn't. [But they DID!]
Your 2022 Oho State Champion 🏆 Cleveland Guardians.
Condolences to the Reds, who in accordance with the rules must now remain in Ohio.
Ohio2 isn't up and running yet.
Lou's letter exemplifies the mismanagement in the business of baseball. Instead of maximizing opportunities for fathers to bring their sons to games -- really, all they had to do was not screw it up, because the game has called for years -- in the quest to "maximize revenue streams" and all of that other quaint business jargon MLB owner have made it difficult for fathers to take sons to the ballpark and have the experience that today's fathers had with their fathers, and that their fathers had with their fathers. THAT is the reason that today's kids don't have the relationship with the sport that past generations did. It's not phones, or that the sport is too slow, or expansion making talent thin. It's the price of a ticket, and the price of parking, and the price of a hot dog, and the inability to watch your team on TV without paying and not miss an episode of the summer-long soap opera (if you can't make it to the park). We don't need ghost runners or pitch clocks or banning the shift or three-batter minimums. We need families to be able financially to go to multiple games a season. We need parents to be able to go to a concession window and not pay $5 for a bottle of water when you can go to the local supermarket and buy 24 of them for $4.99.
I am blessed to make a good living. I took my boys to games from when they were pishers. They are now 21, 19, and 16, and all are rabid baseball fans, far more than any other sport.
All this is true. But doesn't this go for a lot of other things? I can get a ticket for this Sunday's Mets game for less than it would cost me to go to a movie in Queens, and at least the Mets let me bring in my own food. It's just expensive to entertain kids outside the home.
Or that is my understanding. Lacking kids, I am only guessing on my own experience feeling like two movie tickets for anything is too much now.
Yeah, everything is expensive. Try taking your kid to a broadway show (with dinner & parking nearby), and you immediately stop complaining about the price of baseball. Plus, the price of games has nothing to do with baseball losing fans to basketball, football, hockey, etc. which are equally as expensive and more exclusive due to there being fewer games and/or seats.
Well there are always the local minor league teams... oh, wait. Oops.